There are no conversations with Keith at all, which should possibly concern him.

There is absolutely no conversation of interest at Tribal Council until Probst asks Dale how his game has changed. He says that he went from having a long-term strategy to employing a 12-hour strategy. When Probst asks Jon if he noticed the alteration, he notes that he and Dale talked quite a bit. The camera cuts to a pensive Keith, who does seem to be considering what this might mean for his game.

When Jaclyn says, “Yeah, it was kind of nice to get a different viewpoint on things,” loud alarms should be going off for Keith, Missy and Baylor. And indeed Missy notes that neither she nor Baylor are feeling particularly comfortable at the moment. For his part, Dale astutely points out that he’s putting his trust in the people who just voted his daughter out. He says as a lone vote, all he can really offer is his loyalty.

Baylor responds that she’s more loyal than he is, which sends us off in that downward spiral about who stabbed who in the back first back in the early days of Coyopa. Jon comments that since they’re coming to the merge, he needs to know that he has real allies he can count on.

And with that, it’s time to vote. We see Keith’s vote for Dale, Dale’s vote for Missy, and Missy’s vote for Keith. It’s time for Probst to read the votes, and no one plays an idol. (Well, obviously Dale doesn’t.)

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The order goes Dale, Keith, Missy, Keith, Dale, Dale.

It was a good, scrappy effort on Dale’s part. Ultimately, we think Jaclyn saw through the ruse. He overplayed his hand by offering the idol to Jon. If he’d just used it as a threat instead, they might have gone with the Missy or Keith vote. Instead, Jon and Jaclyn figured that if Dale is giving them the idol, why not just eliminate a guy who has proven to be unpleasant?

“You’re beautiful,” Jon tells Jaclyn, probably admiring her brains more than her beauty in this instance.

Keith breathes a sigh of relief.

Next week, we merge. The game changes again. Alliances as we see them are Missy, Baylor, Natalie, Jeremy and Julie and then Josh, Reed, Alec, Wes and presumably Keith since Wes is his son. These dynamics change fast, but a lot of people are about to be very relieved.